“Give it time,” Bailey said, her voice soft and tender in the silence of the room.
She didn’t know anything about me. Time? Really? Time would erase the memory of those men’s hands on my body, of them using me and hurting me and torturing me for their pleasure and amusement? Really? Time. That’s all.
“Leave me alone.”
“I promised Alek we’d stay till he returned.”
I threw the covers off my body and sat up. “Get. Out.” My voice sliced through the small room, surprising even me with its ferocity.
“If you ever want to talk, I’ve been there.” Bailey continued like I hadn’t just shouted at the top of my lungs. Like my outburst meant nothing.
“You don’t know what I went through.” Tears burned at the corners of my eyes. No. No. No. I didn’t want to feel it. I couldn’t. It was too hard. It was better to be still and silent and feel nothing. Why wouldn’t she just let me feel nothing?
“I was raped, too. Tortured, beaten, hunted. The list goes on, Gretchen. So yes, I do know a little about what you are going through.” She whispered something to Erick, and he left Bailey’s side and slipped out my bedroom door, leaving just the two of us…alone.
“I don’t want to talk about it. I want to forget it. Tell me how to forget it. How to not feel their hands sliding up and down my skin. How not to feel where they slapped me. How not to feel the—” My throat closed up, and I couldn’t finish the sentence. “I deserved what I got. I ignored everyone’s warning.”
“Don’t you dare.” Bailey’s voice struck like a whip.
I flinched and turned away from her again. Tears poured uncontrollably down my cheeks again. “I snuck out. I left Alek’s house. I left the safety of the castle. I didn’t believe that it could be as bad as they said.”
Bailey moved to sit beside me, careful to keep her body from touching mine. “No one deserves what happened to you. Don’t ever think that. Not for a single moment.”
“You could make me forget.” I turned to meet her intense gaze. “I just need to forget. I can’t live like this, with this.”
“You can’t heal if you forget.”
“I don’t want to heal. I want to forget. The Protectors make the men forget us when they leave here after the joinings. How is this different?”
Bailey’s mouth tightened, and her gaze dropped to the floor. “Influencing someone takes something away. Magick always comes with a price. Erasing trauma could erase more than you want to part with. It’s not worth the risk.”
“That’s my choice.”
“No.” Bailey’s voice firmed again, becoming harsher, less comforting and more insistent. “I can’t do it anyway. I’m not strong enough, and I haven’t learned how.” She stood from my bedside and walked to the door. “Plus, you have something I didn’t have for a really long time.”
I scoffed, flopping back onto my pillow.
“You’re not alone.”
My breath caught in my throat, and I choked on the angry words I wanted to spit back at her. Alone. I might not be alone in this exact moment, but I would be. Another crisis would come and what happened to me would be old news. Unimportant. Irrelevant. But I didn’t yell or scream. I just let the deadness inside me swell and quiet the pain.
Just because she wouldn’t help me—couldn’t help me—didn’t mean the other Protectors would refuse me as well.
The door opened and closed. I could smell him before he rounded the foot of the bed and stepped into my line of sight. “Can I get you another blanket?”
“No.”
“I want to hold you.” His brown eyes begged for permission, but I couldn’t. The thought of anyone touching me sent a sliver of terror down my spine like the sharp tip of a blade being dragged slowly from my neck to the curve of my lower back. I could still feel the blade. I had felt it, but it hadn’t been steel. It’d been the tip of a talon or claw, and it’d reminded me of Alek and our night—that one wonderfully perfect night, forever trapped and locked away in the back of my mind—but now…now I couldn’t…I couldn’t let him touch me.
I didn’t want him to see my fear. I didn’t fear him, but I was terrified of what my memories would do to him. How they would hurt him. Make him feel guilty. He didn’t deserve to feel guilty. No matter what Bailey said, I knew what’d happened to me was my fault.
Not his.
Only mine.
And I would have to live with it, at least for now.
“Gretchen?”
I glanced up, meeting his pained expression. His shoulders were slumped forward, and his hands were clenched at his sides. The tendons in his neck strained, and his cheek twitched, stress showing in the muscles of his jaw.
“No.” I couldn’t explain past that, not without letting it all out, and I wasn’t ready to do that.
He sank into the chair at my desk and ran his hand over the worn fabric cover of Little Women. Without a word, he picked it up and turned to the first page. His voice rumbled softly. “ ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,’ grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.’”
Anger surged through my chest, burning across my ribcage like a firestorm. I wanted to scream and tell him to put it away. That book was my safe place. It had been my favorite story since the very first year I’d met him in the library when I was eleven. He’d placed it in my hands after returning from a mission that had kept him from Sanctuary for over two weeks—a mission that had made him miss my birthday and our annual reading of the story. Now he was reading it while I was broken and angry and scared. He was ruining it.
“Stop.” My voice broke. I climbed from the bed and ripped the book from his hands. “You can’t fix this with a story.” I hugged the book to my chest, tears burning trails of fire down my cheeks.
“I don’t want to fix you. I just want you to feel safe. This book has so many good mem—”
“And I don’t want them tainted with this.” I waved my hands in the air. “I’m ruined, broken, dirty, and I won’t let you destroy the memory of this book by mixing it into…this.”
His cheek flexed, and I saw his arms move, but I couldn’t react. Not fast enough. Those big strong limbs of his wrapped around my shaking, angry body, and I screamed, terror overwhelming everything inside me that wanted him to touch me. That wanted his comfort. I couldn’t. Not yet, maybe not ever.
He released me instantly, and his voice shook as he spoke. “You are strong, and I love you, and you are mine.”
I backed away from him, shaking my head. “It hurts too much. I can’t live this way.”
“I will do anything to help you, Gretchen. I would die right here, right now to save you from another second of agony. Please don’t call yourself ruined or dirty. You aren’t those things. You are my beautiful mate with sunshine in her heart and a smile on her lips. You are everything to me and always will be. No matter what you choose to do, I support you.”
“You heard me.” I climbed to the center of my bed, wrapping myself in my blanket like the cocoon of fleece would somehow insulate me from anything outside of my bedroom.
“I did, and I want you to know it is your choice. I want you to feel safe and whole. I don’t want you to suffer a moment longer than you have to, and if what you want is to forget, then I’ll find someone who will do that for you, but if you make the choice to heal on your own, I am with you. You are brave, even if you don’t believe it. You are strong, even if you feel weak. Bailey was right about one thing.”
“What?”
“You are not alone.”
I curled into my bed, contemplating his words. Exhaustion claimed me a few minutes later, and I drifted to sleep, knowing he was watching over me from across the room.
When I woke again, my room was once again inhabited by a Protector. This time it was Javier.
His blue eyes glinted at me, cold and discerning. He had no affection for me. No affection for anyone. All the Sisters called him an asshole and a sadist. One of the Sisters was into that kind of ma
sochism, but mostly, he played with a few of the unattached Lycan females in town. I’d seen a few of his scenes over the years. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if the pain of his lash would erase the pain in my heart. Maybe Bailey was right, maybe there was a way to heal without erasing anything.
“It won’t.” He crossed his arms and frowned. “Hiding from pain with more pain is like slapping a Band-Aid on a stab wound. It might cover the hole, but the wound beneath will rot and kill you all the same.”
“How did you know what I was thinking?”
“Everyone who goes through trauma thinks about it. I made the mistake of using a woman once who wanted to hide from emotional pain by burying herself in physical pain, but I’ll not be making it again.”
“What happened to her?”
“She had to face her shit.”
“You’re an ass.” The words tumbled out before I could stop them. I’d never been so purposefully ugly. I wanted to hurt him.
“So I’ve been told.” He chewed on the inside of his cheek and cocked his head toward the hallway. “Still doesn’t change the fact that you tried to talk Bailey into whitewashing your brain, which she can’t do, by the way.”
“I know. Will you do it?”
He nodded, and a strange fluttering of excitement made my hands tremble. “Alek sent me in here to talk to you. First, do you care about Alek at all?”
My chest clenched, and I turned from Javier’s hard gaze. My heart pounded in my chest. Of course I did. I loved Alek more than anything in the entire world, but I was so scared that I couldn’t think straight. It was irrational, but it was my reality. I didn’t want to be scared, but I was. That’s why I was trying to get my brain reset. “I’m so scared.”
“Of him?”
“Of how his Gryphon reminds me of—” I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t compare him to that monster. They both had talons the size of my fingers, though Alek would never hurt me. I knew that. Deep down in my soul, I knew he would never…but I couldn’t shake the memory of Xerxes. Of the way he’d used that against me. The way he’d compared himself to Alek. He’d purposefully planted the similarity in my mind, and now I couldn’t shake it.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” He crossed to the door and opened it. “There are some things we need to discuss before you make this choice. Bailey didn’t lie when she said magick comes with a price.”
Alek walked in, his face somber and etched with pain. “Please give us a moment.” Alek’s tone was soft, beaten.
“No, don’t leave.” Each word a struggle. Another man. I was surrounded by men, but I needed him to help me. I needed him to fix me.
I winced, pulling my comforter tighter around my shoulders. Javier’s words stung with truth, but this was the best option. I didn’t see an end to the pain or the fear. I couldn’t live and be afraid of the man I loved. Everything had been perfect, was perfect, until it wasn’t.
I’d ruined it with my stupid choices.
Now when I looked at Alek, I saw the beast first instead of the man. A scary beast, not the beast that I’d found amazing and strong and wondrous, and now I didn’t want to be touched.
“I’m sorry.” Alek knelt at the side of my bed, setting down a fresh glass of water.
“I need you to move away from me.” My voice shook with each word. I trembled from the tips of my fingers to the end of my toes. Every few seconds I would steal a glance at his hands, waiting for them to change into the deadly talons I knew existed beneath his human facade. My mind had created a monster where my heart knew it didn’t exist. It wasn’t fair.
He nodded and backed away from the bed, taking up residence once more in my desk chair. “I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have. I’m so sorry. I just needed to touch you, and I thought if you could just feel our connection—”
“I want to forget. I can’t live like this. When I think someone is going to touch me, I freak out. I feel them, Alek. I feel their hands and…everything. I’m not strong enough to heal on my own.”
“Javier.”
The vampire stepped toward the bed again.
Alek turned back to me. “I told you I would die to save you from another moment of suffering. I meant what I said. You are more important than anything to me in this entire world. This can heal you. This can take away your pain. This can give you back your life, your spirit, everything. If this is what you need, I want it for you with my whole heart.”
Relief flooded through me. We could just go back to that night, to when the world was perfect and right. There were no monsters behind my closed eyelids, behind every sound, in every touch.
Javier took a seat on the other edge of the bed. “I have to touch your head to do this.”
I swallowed my fear and nodded, inching closer until I was within arms-length of him. This would be worth it. I could do this. I could handle his touch long enough to give me a second chance to be in love with Alek, to belong to him the way I’d wanted for so long.
Javier placed his fingertips on my scalp and temple. “Look directly into my eyes.”
“Okay.”
“Before I start, I have to warn you. This is not an exact science. There’s always a chance that more will be taken than what you might want to lose.”
“What do you mean?” A new fear shot through my body. I’d lost so much. Losing this pain felt like the answer, but the tone in Javier’s voice stilled my heart.
“You might not feel the same way about Alek after this. You might not love him. You might not remember things about him. Memories are tricky, and taking them away is one of the most challenging things a vampire can attempt. We don’t really worry about the men who come back and forth to the castle. They’re expendable to some extent.”
I glanced at Alek, expecting him to call the whole thing off. Part of me wanted him to make that choice for me. On one hand, I wanted nothing more than to forget all that had happened to me since I crawled out his bathroom window. On the other, I didn’t want to lose him. What if I forgot him and was left with this aching hole in my heart that I couldn’t explain or fix?
“You won’t lose me, Gretchen, no matter what. Even if we have to fall in love all over again, you have my heart. Rose said that’s why the marks came. Part of my soul is inside you, and part of yours is in me. That’s the light that shines when the marks glow. We are forever bound. Memories or not, I will always love you.”
My stomach twisted, and my fingers shook in my lap. He was right…we could fall in love again, would fall in love again. Like he said, we were bonded. These marks on my collarbone linked us at a level I didn’t even pretend to understand.
“Look into my eyes.” Javier’s voice cut through my whirling thoughts.
I snapped my gaze to his and then jerked away from his hands. No. “No. I can’t. I won’t risk losing you, Alek.” Tears welled in my eyes. “I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. I don’t know when I’ll be ready to touch you or anyone else again…ever.”
“Are you sure?” He came out of the chair and squatted beside the bed. “Javier can make it so you don’t have to live with any of it. Even if you lose some of our memories, we can start fresh. It will be okay.”
“No. I can’t lose you, too. They took my dignity and my confidence and most of my sanity. The only thing I still have in my life that’s good is you. If this magick backfires and steals that good away along with the bad, then I’ll lose the only thing that ever mattered to me.” I backed away from Javier and wrapped myself into my comforter again. “As scared and confused as I am, I’m still not willing to live without our memories.”
“I’ll let you guys talk.” Javier stood and left the room, closing the door behind him.
“I’m going to need time. I can’t even begin to guess, but I—”
“It doesn’t matter, Gretchen. Anything you need, for as long as you need, no matter what.”
“What if I’m always scared? What if I can’t get past it? Ever?”
“It doesn�
�t matter. I will love you forever.”
I nodded, trying to make myself believe the promise he’d declared more than once, but my head was swimming, and I needed to be alone, at least for now. “I need to sleep. I’m so tired.”
He stood and started to reach for me, but stopped his hand halfway. “Do you want me to stay? Or send someone else to sit with you?”
“I just want to be alone for a while.”
He nodded. “Of course.” His words were soft, but I could still hear the worry lacing the edge of his tone. “I’ll check on you in a little while.”
I lay down, buried my face in my pillow, closed my eyes, and waited for him to leave. When the door opened and shut, I opened them again and glanced around the room. He had left. Just as he’d said he would.
Relief and sadness swelled in my body at the same time. Nothing about the choice I’d made was going to be easy. I had to be okay with that. I had to be okay with taking it slow. I had to trust that he was telling the truth. That he was okay with slow, too. My gut said he wasn’t lying, but I still worried. I couldn’t help it.
I was broken. Even if I managed to glue all the pieces back together, the cracks would always show. They would be part of me.
Forever.
Chapter 24
ALEK
I opened the door onto the main club area of the castle basement floor and nearly collided with Bella.
“How is she?”
“She chose not to erase the memories.” My chest tightened painfully, and my heart pounded behind my ribs, reminding me how much I’d wanted her to choose what I’d thought would be the easiest way for her to heal, to move on. To somehow be okay with something that would never be okay.
I gritted my teeth against the tears welling in my eyes and the overwhelming urge to fall apart. How was I going to handle never touching Gretchen? I’d almost reached for her when I left. I knew I’d do it again. I needed her, craved her touch. “I told her that no matter what she needed, no matter how long it takes, I will be there for her.”
Sanctuary, Texas Complete Series Box Set Page 113
